Shop Girl

by Mary Portas

  I’d like to say I was drunk with relief by late afternoon on my first Christmas Eve at Harrods. Instead I’ve drunk a large portion of a bottle of Baileys followed by a couple of brandy chasers. I am part of a skeleton windows team whose job it is to retrieve items from windows if people want to buy them, then fill the gap that has been left. I am sitting with Roger and Caroline in a small cupboard to the right of door one. It is called ‘the front box’ and about an hour ago we decided to celebrate with a drink and a mince pie.

  But we’ve just had a call about a gold Dunhill lighter that is in a window filled with accessories behind small leather goods. It’s needed urgently.

  ‘We’ll go,’ I say to Caroline. ‘But don’t eat all the mince pies.’

  I can hear Lord Mustard, the busker, playing outside as Roger and I step out of the front box to see shoppers stream inside the store.

  ‘I can hardly see straight!’ hisses Roger.

  ‘Follow me!’

  The window is filled with a wooden fireplace that we’ve had built. On and around it are stacked picture frames, lighters, wallets, crystal, glassware and fragrances. The colour theme is black, white and gold and we’ve finished off the window with a clutch of candles in the shape of Pierrot the clown. Shoppers are going mad for them.

  After unscrewing the back panel, Roger holds onto it as I climb into the window. There isn’t time to close the blinds. I see the lighter, force my eyes to focus properly and step towards it. But just as my hand closes around it, the back panel crashes into the window. It is a chain reaction of destruction as things fall one by one. Glasses sail through the air and a bottle smashes. Pierrot heads – decapitated by the force – go flying.

  ‘It slipped out of my hands,’ I hear Roger shrieking. ‘It just slipped out!’

  Shoppers stop on the other side of the glass as I stand frozen in the spotlights. They stare in horror. Christmas has been destroyed. There will be no peace for me the next day as I wonder if I will be sacked.

  Ferragamo belt

  My head is level with Berge’s crotch. My eyes crawl past his belt buckle – Ferragamo – towards his flaring nostrils. I’m kneeling on the floor in front of a mannequin’s leg. Her head looks uncannily like Joan Collins’s. She is from Adel Rootstein’s latest collection and I knocked off her leg as I tried to get her through the access panel into the window. If the leg is chipped it will have to be resprayed.

  ‘Do you know how much eet cost?’ Berge hisses, as his assistant glares at me. ‘Peek it up!’

  I scrabble on the floor but my hands have turned to jelly. Sweat beads on my upper lip. My heart thumps. Finally grabbing hold of the leg, I brandish it at Berge.

  ‘Hold the feeking thing properly by its middle parts next time!’

  Shoppers pass by as we stand in the beauty hall at the entrance to a front window. It’s early January, and Roger and I escaped the Christmas fiasco by cobbling the display back together and withstanding a rocket from Mr McKittrick. Today I am assisting Berge with a window full of cruisewear. Apparently Harrods customers are preparing to board boats in the Caribbean and need lighter clothes for their holidays.

  ‘Do I have to?’ I’d said to Caroline, after Desdemoaner had told me at this morning’s meeting that I was needed on the front windows.

  I never enjoy going onto them. It’s a busy day on front windows if you get to steam a dress whereas after seven months on the back ones I’ve been promoted to a dresser and am doing more and more. We’ve done displays hung with giant African masks to showcase travel and all its related products – furniture and leather goods from abroad, suitcases and trunks filled with rugs and chunky ethnic jewellery – and a window titled ‘Table Top Dining on Four’ that featured a mannequin wearing a table top around her midriff stacked with china and covered with a pleated cloth that doubled as a skirt.

  Another showcased a replica of the Great Pyramid on a sand-covered floor to show off gold products, from gilt furniture to jewellery, shoes and gold-plated china, and we stood five willowy mannequins each holding the leads of fabric dogs whose coats matched their outfits – one with spots, another in checks, one in tweed, one in stripes and the last in tartan – in the windows to showcase haberdashery. A few designs had had to be ripped out after we’d installed them because they didn’t work. You never knew how a drawing on paper would come to life but even the mistakes had taught me something.

  I’d hoped I might get away with assisting Andrew or Peter on the front windows but instead I am at the mercy of Berge. So far this morning I have followed him around the store with two other assistants as he has picked a product, holding it up, letting it fall, feeling the fabric between his hands and scrutinizing it. One shade of yellow is too pale, another too sharp; a satin coat will look shiny under the lights; a velvet jacket is too heavy. Once everything is chosen, I take it down to the studio to press it before hanging the clothes on a rail outside the window.

  Berge has already dressed two mannequins. There is just the last to do. I follow him into the window. It smells of paint and glue. Lights hanging from the ceiling illuminate a statuesque brunette lounging against a giant acid-green banana leaf. She is wearing pale lemon flared trousers and a peach silk shirt by Yves Saint Laurent, her entire right arm layered with gold bracelets. Another mannequin, legs astride and leaning against an azure blue wall, wears an Eres swimming costume and Oscar de la Renta sandals. Together they stand at the centre of a scene that melds haute couture with the tropics.

  The floor has been painted pink and the front section nearest to the windowpane is covered with ripples of golden sand that I spent hours this morning vacuuming into the perfect position. Not a grain out of place. When Berge came to inspect what I’d done, his eyes had narrowed before he’d wordlessly climbed out of the window.

  We are wearing just our socks to avoid marking the floors. I think of the hole in mine as I kneel down to place the mannequin’s feet while the assistant carefully holds her body. She is going to wear a canary yellow lightweight woollen coat and a matching dress covered with bright pink flowers by Valentino. Berge will dress her, then we will wire her into position and he will do his final touches.

  We hold the mannequin as Berge wriggles her dress over her head and puts on the coat. He slips pink Gianfranco Ferre sandals onto her feet. Not a crease can be made in the fabric or a single scuff on the leather. Berge’s eyes narrow to slits as he concentrates. His movements are delicate, as if he’s cradling a newborn. For Berge the product is a relic that cannot be defiled. He is economical and precise as he works. I hold my breath until black spots appear before my eyes, not daring to move. The air is heavy with the smell of his Halston aftershave.

  We’ve already secured a loop of wire around the mannequin’s waist and two longer sections trail down to the floor from underneath her dress. When Berge has finished dressing her, he stands back and I take the first piece of wire, pull it taut and hammer a nail into the floor to secure it near the mannequin’s feet. I must be careful. I cannot chip the floor. The window is a fantasy, a dreamscape. It must be perfect.

  I dread the moment when the assistant will let go of the mannequin to see if she is steady. If the wire is not in the perfect position, she might fall.

  ‘Did you go out last night?’ the assistant asks Berge, as I work.

  ‘San Lorenzo,’ he says, but I can hear in his voice that he doesn’t want to talk.

  His eyes bore into me as I move to the back of the mannequin and take the second piece of wire before nailing it into place. I think I’ve got the angle right. I’ve learned to wire mannequins pretty well by now but have never had to do it for Berge. I sit back on my heels as the assistant slowly lets go of the mannequin. She remains perfectly in position.

  The assistant climbs out of the window as I stand up beside Berge and he pulls a roll of wire out of his pocket. In his right hand is a pair of tiny scissors. Reaching down into my tool belt, my fingers close around a box of pins. I cannot keep him waiting for a s
econd if he needs anything. Berge kneels in front of the mannequin and snips one of the stitches in the hem of her skirt.

  With just a few deft strokes, he threads the wire and bends the hem of the skirt before sitting back on his heels to inspect his work. The hem seems to flutter in the breeze. Light from overhead streams through banana leaves hanging from the ceiling. It bounces off the silk and makes it glow. With just a few tiny movements, Berge has made not just the fabric but the whole window come alive. The mannequins are stepping through a fantasy jungle as breezes whisper around them, and the chatter of monkeys echoes through the air. It is extraordinary.

  ‘It is done,’ Berge says, and steps out of the window.

  Levi 501’s

  It was Valentine’s night when I walked into the Hill Top Wine Bar in Pinner with Merry Smethurst. There were candles flickering everywhere and Rose Royce was playing on the speakers.

  ‘One drink and then I’m going,’ Merry muttered darkly, as we walked up to the bar.

  We stared at the wine list. I honestly didn’t know what any of it meant but everyone had taken to drinking buckets of wine in these bars so I’d joined in. We ordered our drinks before sitting at a table, surrounded by couples knocking back bottles of chardonnay before moving in for a snog.

  ‘Coming out might not have been my best idea,’ I finally admitted.

  ‘No,’ Merry replied. ‘But we’re here now so we might as well enjoy it. How’s work?’

  ‘I had a bit of an accident last week.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Dropped a crystal trophy worth thousands.’

  ‘Mary!’

  ‘I know. It had been stored in the Harrods safe for generations. McKittrick went mad. But it was a genuine accident. Fiona and I were trying to get it into a window and it was so heavy we dropped it. I’m usually so careful. I thought I was going to get sacked.’

  ‘Will they dock your wages?’

  ‘If they do, I’ll be working at Harrods until I’m about ninety.’

  Merry collapsed into giggles as the door opened and in walked a face from the past. I’d known Ian Atkins for years and he was with a guy I also knew from around Watford. With jet black curly hair, brown eyes and lashes as long as a cow’s, he was incredibly good-looking. I’d always longed for him to ask me to dance at the New Penny when I was sixteen but he was a couple of years older and constantly had some pretty girl or other by his side. Then he’d disappeared and I’d only seen him occasionally. I’d heard he’d gone to university, which was unusual for kids from Watford, and apparently he was now working in Wales as a chemical engineer. He was wearing battered old Levi’s and a white T-shirt. He must have been bloody freezing.

  Ian walked up to our table. ‘Hi, Mary!’ he said, as he bent to give me a kiss. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Still at Harrods?’

  ‘Just about.’

  Merry giggled as Ian looked at me in confusion.

  ‘I’ll explain later,’ I said. ‘This is Merry.’

  As Ian said hello, I turned towards his friend.

  He smiled at me. His eyes were kind. Sexy too.

  ‘I’m Mary,’ I said. ‘Joe Newton’s sister.’

  ‘Hi, Mary,’ he replied. ‘Good to meet you. I’m Graham. Graham Portas.’

  The boxer

  Celebrities loved Harrods. Mick Jagger, Rod Stewart, Gary Numan, Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher, Sir Matt Busby, Bobby Charlton and George Best were among the ones I saw. Ingrid Bergman and Bette Davis were some of those I missed, and I thought of what Dad would have said if he’d known.

  But while all these people caused a ripple of chat among the sales and display staff, there was one who caused more of a stir than most. A relative newcomer to notoriety, she’d walk into the store wearing a gathered skirt and white shirt looking like a thousand other well-born girls who came from a clique that had been dubbed the Sloane Rangers. Her name was Lady Diana Spencer.

  ‘She’s just walked in door seven!’ one of the ground-floor team would yelp.

  ‘She’s on her way up to China. Bloody china department! Doesn’t she need a lipstick?’

  Diana never failed to cause excitement because her engagement to Prince Charles had just been announced and the whole country had come down with wedding fever. Then I stepped into a lift one day with Roger to find her standing in it alone. As we stood silently at either side of her, I held my breath and wondered if Roger was going to curtsy.

  But there was only one well-known person with whom I ever exchanged any words. It happened as I climbed out of one of the back windows after dressing it. Access to the window was through one of the men’s changing rooms and I’d asked a salesgirl to put up a sign saying that it wasn’t in use while I was in the window. But as I got out, I found a man standing in the changing room in his boxer shorts. He was the biggest person I’d ever seen in my life.

  ‘Welcome to the party!’ Muhammad Ali said, as I stared at him.

  Big Bertha

  Christmas was hardly even a memory by the time we started preparing for Easter but there was really only one thing that could fill any display.

  ‘We have to put Big Bertha in there,’ Caroline had told me.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘The giant egg we make every year. She always has pride of place in our windows.’

  I’d gone down into the warren of rooms under the store that housed stock and cold rooms, seamstresses and carpenters to find the chocolate-makers in a room filled with vats. ‘Have one for yourself, why don’t you?’ the Irish ladies who stirred them said, as I ordered up Big Bertha and they offered me a chocolate.

  There were boxes full of them everywhere.

  ‘It will take us a week to make her!’ the women had said. ‘Now go on. Have another one.’

  With a stomach full of chocolate, I headed off to find the men who built the props for our windows in the basement studio. We needed a miniature house painted in pastel colours to fill with eggs and confectionery. The carpenters, Eddie, Stan, Mick and Dave, would make it, Ted would paint it and Bob the ticket-maker would hand-paint the price signs in his beautiful calligraphy. Meanwhile there was Ernie, the fibreglass moulder, who made our props and was usually found light-headedly spraying them on the roof of the building, and one-finger George, who operated the freight lift with Dennis, who had only one leg.

  Every time one of these men walked onto the shop floor, one of the buyers would bristle.

  ‘Is this really us?’ Sylvia would sigh, if I chatted for too long to someone wearing overalls. ‘Think of the customers!’

  ‘Keep your hat on, darlin’!’ Ted, who looked like a male Mrs Tiggywinkle in dungarees, would boom before shuffling off back to the basement. ‘Can’t an old man have a flutter with a pretty gel?’

  A couple of weeks after placing my orders for the painted house and Big Bertha, I went back down to the basement on the day that I was due to dress the window. With Ted’s help, I took the props back upstairs and spent the next few hours carefully doing the display. Everyone else was busy and by now I was trusted to do displays alone so I filled the house with sugared almonds and hand-painted eggs. There was box after box of chocolates and tubes of rainbow-coloured jellybeans. Turkish Delight, marshmallows and toffees were piled in glass jars. Big Bertha stood at the centre. I’d positioned the lights to bounce off her beautiful wrapping and I could see that Caroline had been right. Big Bertha was magnificent. All four feet of her.

  Half an hour later, I got back from the canteen to find Caroline white-faced outside the window.

  ‘You put the lights too close,’ she said, before laughter exploded out of her.

  Big Bertha’s top had melted. She looked like a boiled egg ready to be eaten.

  Chanel No 5

  I’d seen Spandau Ballet at the Sundown Club, listened obsessively to Simple Minds on my new Walkman, in awe that I could now have music with me everywhere I went, and almost cried with frustration when Bucks
Fizz got to number one wearing skater skirts that ripped off to reveal matching pants. But it was Vivienne Westwood’s pirate look that dominated as Adam and the Ants topped the charts dressed in gold-braided jackets and war paint as they sang ‘Stand And Deliver’.

  Meanwhile I was channelling part Dexys Midnight Runners, part Hazel O’Connor. Strolling into Harrods wearing pinstriped baggy trousers with braces and a man’s white shirt, I looked at least three inches taller, thanks to the blonde perm that I backcombed religiously each morning. But I’d had to smarten up. I’d been promoted.

  Despite all my misdemeanours, I’d proved myself a good dresser and was regularly asked to assist Berge on the front windows. I’d even been allowed to accessorize a mannequin in one of his windows, and eventually a day had come when he checked what I’d done and didn’t change anything. He just narrowed his eyes, glared at me and left the window.

  I was full of ideas but knew that I wouldn’t be able to realize them all in the back-windows team. I wanted to be promoted from dresser to senior dresser but there wasn’t a vacancy because Caroline, Elaine, Fiona and Roger weren’t going anywhere. The five of us were as close as ever and Elaine and I had now moved in with Fiona to a two-up-two-down cottage belonging to her uncle.

  ‘It’s damp, it’s cold and it’s cramped,’ she’d said. ‘Do you want to share?’

  All of what she’d said was true – plus the fact that the house was miles out of town in Sudbury Hill and I had to share a bedroom with Elaine. But as we shopped and cooked together, watched M*A*S*H on the TV, drinking Fiona’s home-brew beer, and I squeezed into my single bed with Graham on the nights when Elaine went away, I was happy.